


today our hands unravel a perfect orange

by betony



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 09:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: Cadet Roy Mustang, with the help of his master’s daughter, takes a step closer to becoming the Flame Alchemist ...eventually.





	today our hands unravel a perfect orange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartbeatstumbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbeatstumbles/gifts).

> Title taken from “Perfect Orange” by Ching In-Chen.

_ Atmospheric Composition: Nitrogen, 78% atomic number 7, atomic weight 14. Oxygen, 21%, atomic number 8, atomic weight 16 …  _

Roy shuts the battered old notebook he hasn’t used since he was just a kid studying with Master Hawkeye with a decisive thud. This is it, he reminds himself, the moment of truth. He’s been hard at work at deciphering Master Hawkeye’s array for the last two weeks—since nominally, he’s still on leave from the military for the rest of the month—and now, at last, he thinks he might know enough to make a first try at actually using it. He doesn’t feel ready, of course, perhaps he never will. Better he go ahead now before his courage deserts him entirely. There’s only one thing missing. 

He steps to the open study door and calls out into the hallway. “Riza!” 

When Roy decided to stay, even before the funeral and what Riza had shown him there, he had thought that if nothing else, he could help Riza pack up the house and settle her father’s debts. None of this has happened yet. Instead daily Riza commands him to go work at puzzling out the array and disappears off to yet another distant corner of the house to get things into order. At best, all she lets him do is carry her up to bed from where she’s slumped over the dinner table, do the dishes, and try to have breakfast ready before she wakes up at a characteristically indecent hour. 

She’s there in seconds, hurtling down the stairs at a speed that instantly makes Roy feel guilty for having alarmed her. “What’s wrong?” she demands. “Are you all right?” Her hands go up to the buttons of her blouse, apparently unconsciously. “Do you need to see...  _ it _ again?” 

“No! I’m fine, and not now, thanks,” Roy yelps, noticing that her hair is tightly covered with a rag, and even her apron hasn’t kept her skirt from being smeared with dust and nondescript stains. She must have been busy fixing the pipes upstairs again. He feels even more like an idiot than before. “I’m sorry for bothering you,” he starts over as he leads her back into the study so they’re both standing by the desk, “but I think I might be close to working out how to use the array, and I…” _I_ _wanted you to be here?_ No. That sounds stupid. Instead he tells her, “I thought you deserved to be here when I did,” because, more than anyone else in this world, she does. Without her, there would be no flame alchemy. Without her, he wouldn’t be here at all.

To his surprise, and relief, Riza smiles. “All right then,” she tells him, pulling off her makeshift scarf so her hair catches the sunlight, and there’s a flicker of challenge in her lovely warm eyes. “Let’s see it.” 

“Right!” says Roy, steadfastly ignoring the fact that the word comes out a tad higher in pitch than it needs to be. “So. Here we go. Um….” 

It’s approximately a thousand times more nervewracking doing this in front of Riza than he expects it’ll be performing before the State Board of Alchemists for his certification. For one thing, all the Board can do is fail you. Riza, on the other hand, inherited all of her father’s terrible sarcasm and lacks all scruples when it comes to laughing at a man when he’s already down. That fiasco five years ago at Nellie Lockheed’s birthday party, back when he still boarded here with Master Hawkeye and Riza, is more than proof of that. 

The array, fortunately, is easy enough to remember. It’s a simple one, only using the critical part of the main array and the extra addition he’s reasoned out, but it’s enough to show him whether or not he’s on the right track. He raises his right hand, kisses his fingers for luck the way Vanessa would—and snaps.

Riza slumps to the floor.

Roy calls her name, panicked, but he’s only barely gotten to his knees by the time her eyelids flutter open. “Are you all right? Are you sure? What can I do?”

“Yes, yes, and nothing,” is her placid response, and Roy refuses to let himself believe her. She could have died, she could have been irrevocably damaged, she could be—she currently  _ is _ batting away his hands as he tries to help her up. He peers at her, half-expecting to find indignation there. He finds unholy amusement instead, which is somehow worse.

“ _ Is _ this how you sweep girls off their feet back home in Central?” Riza wants to know as she scrambles to a stand. “It certainly leaves an impression. Mostly on the floor. But it must leave you plenty of time to swoop in and offer your services to the lucky lady in question.”

“It’s not like that!” Roy protests, and adds, sulkily. “ _ They _ come begging for dates with me, I’ll have you know.”

Riza lets that be, clearly more interested in an explanation, judging by the crook of her eyebrows. He supposes he owes her that much; he had promised more in the way of well—flame.

“The density of the oxygen,” he babbles back, staring up at her helplessly. “I must have increased it too soon. It’s meant to become volatile, but it only made you dizzy instead. It won’t happen next time.”

“Shame,” says Riza, so straight-faced he knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. “I think you might be onto something. The Fainting Alchemist, felling ladies by the sheer power of his charm.”

All Roy can manage is a “I’ll have you know—,” but his cheeks are so warm he can’t hope to seem intimidating at all. Riza certainly doesn’t seem to think so because she only nods her head in the direction of his notebook before beginning to climb upstairs once more. 

“I would think twice about leaving those out in plain sight,” she warns, an alchemist’s daughter to the end. She’s right, of course; Riza is always right. It’s one of her worst faults. Had she been in charge of planning the entertainment for Nellie Lockheed’s party, for example, Amestris should be bereft an epidemic of giggles and one half-shaven goat. On which note:  _ Nellie _ .  _ Nitrogen _ .  _ Octavia...Oxygen? _

Brilliant, Roy decides, and begins to scrawl and substitute words in his notebook. He’ll dazzle Riza with his discovery at dinner.

(He supposes he ought not to be surprised when she only asks how he means to tell them all apart.)

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Per Arakawa in the omakes, this actually is Roy’s tip flirting technique! (Which naturally means I had fun writing a much less confident Roy discovering it for the first time.) The notebook code is also canonical!


End file.
